


Hay Fever

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, prompted fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 14:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10388826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: Gretto's birthday is hitting Maiza hard this year; and then Firo walks in.





	

**Author's Note:**

> thegoldenhigh on tumblr asked for Maiza crying. I decided to branch out from the Ronny-Maiza dynamic lol.

Maiza often forgets his own birthday. After over two hundred years, it’s kind of irrelevant, isn’t it? Every now and then it occurs to him that he doesn’t know his exact age and he has to subtract 1685 from the current year to remember. 

But he does find himself remembering Gretto’s birthday every year, which is even more ridiculous than dwelling on his own. Gretto will never be two hundred and some years old. Gretto will never be older than seventeen. 

This year, though, that counterargument only leaves him devastated and morose. It is the middle of the day, and Maiza is supposed to be working, but instead he is sitting at his desk with his hands pressed over his face, his shoulders shaking with the thought of how desperately he failed his brother two hundred years ago. 

Maiza is so absorbed in the task of keeping his tears quiet—even if he can’t quite stifle them entirely—that he doesn’t hear the footsteps rushing down the hallway. So when the office door bursts open, he jumps and swivels the chair away from the door, reaching frantically for his glasses with one hand while wiping his eyes with the other.

The footsteps stop in the doorway.

“Maiza?”

It’s Firo. Maiza remembers what he is to Firo—a mentor, an older brother figure, someone to rely on—and at last manages to stop his sobs. He pulls a smile back onto his face so that he can be sure it comes through in his voice, too, and reaches preemptively for the file on the casino. “Hello, Firo, did you need something?”

“Yeah, I wanted to take a quick look at the costs for the new machines… Uh, I’m sorry to burst in on you, Maiza…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Discreetly, Maiza wipes his nose and eyes with a handkerchief. He’s going to have to turn and face Firo, and it’s going to be obvious that he’s been crying, and that’s just how this is going to go. It’d be disrespectful to Firo to stay turned away.

But before he can start to turn, Firo pipes up from behind him again, his voice quiet.

“Maiza? Are you all right?”

Maiza hesitates. He could tell the truth, he supposes. Firo doesn’t much like to be brushed aside—understandable, as few people do.

And yet—

He turns at last, the smile on his face pleasant and noncommittal. “I’m fine, you just caught me in the middle of an embarrassing attack of hay fever. The costs for the new machines, you said?”

“Yeah…”

As Maiza rifles through the file, Firo approaches the desk—but despite all his earlier urgency, he still seems subdued as Maiza locates the page in question. He takes out a pencil and notebook and jots down the figures Maiza has for him but doesn’t speak except to say a quiet, “Thanks.” Then, as he rifles through the notebook absently, he takes a deep breath.

“That was an excuse Gretto used to use a lot, wasn’t it?”

Maiza freezes.

“The hay fever thing,” Firo clarifies, his eyes averted. “When your dad had been picking on him, stuff like that.”

Maiza’s heart is pounding much harder than it ought to. He closes the file and then clenches his hand into a grounding fist. “I suppose it is,” he agrees, knowing that his smile has become fragile. “I’d… forgotten, actually, that that’s something I first heard from him.”

“It sounded familiar,” Firo says by way of explanation, or maybe apology.

“Of course. It’s not surprising that it would awaken something in your memory.”

Especially _today_ , he doesn’t say. If Firo hasn’t made that connection, Maiza doesn’t want to force it onto him. Firo shouldn’t have to know _any_  of this. 

There is an awkward silence. Firo hovers, scratching the back of his hand and looking around the room. But just as Maiza’s opening his mouth to reassure him that he’s just fine, Firo speaks again.

“You used to say, ‘Hay fever doesn’t leave bruises,’ and look after him.” 

The memory, almost forgotten, blooms in Maiza’s mind: dabbing the cut on Gretto’s cheek with a warm, damp cloth. Sending away the servants and curling his lip, letting loose his real opinion of their father in unambiguous terms. That crass bluster is something Firo’s never seen from him—not Firo himself—and it’s a bit embarrassing that he knows that part of Maiza’s past now.

But Firo’s smile isn’t a mocking one, or even a smirk at a shared secret. There’s something awkward about it, something embarrassed—but compassionate, too. 

“He really appreciated when you did that,” he mumbles, meeting Maiza’s eyes and for just a second wearing a brighter smile.

Maiza catches his breath, tears threatening at his eyelids again, but he manages to smile back.

“Thank you, Firo.”


End file.
